Dialing up the Terror

I was watching Don’t Hang Up and I began wandering what makes telephone calls so creepy? I think the most obvious reason for this stems from the fear of the unknown as you do not know who or what is on the other end of the line. Most of the time in horror films the voice is distorted (Scream) so the horror stems from not knowing who is making the call as you can only hear the voice. The fear is doubly worse when the caller knows precise information about you and your whereabouts. Another aspect of pure terror stems from the sheer helplessness of hearing something on the phone and being unable to do anything about it, especially when you hear someone being hacked to death on the other end of the phone (think Halloween and Sorry, Wrong Number).

At the time of the advent of mobile phones, horror films quickly began to incorporate them into the horror lore. The horror became mobile rather than just stuck at home terrorising an innocent babysitter. Creepy stalkers no longer had to wait until you were in the comfort of your own home before they began to harass you. Films like One Missed Call, a film where people received phone calls predicting their death, had mobile phones as the main source of terror. Phones were also used to bring light to dark corners if (unlike me) you could actually find the torch button on your phone.

But what are the golden moments where phones installed a sense of terror in the viewer? This list will focus entirely on commination using telephones.

At 60 years old Sorry, Wrong Number is the oldest film on this list and it is about a disabled woman who hears a murder plot on her phone. She is only able to listen and frantically call for help from anyone she could think of. What’s so unnerving about this call is that Leona Stevenson is completely helpless and as 11.15 pm gets every closer you begin to wonder you might actually know who the victim is.

It’s not all ringing and chatting because you can generate a chilling scare using a simple text message. How? Well step forward Olivier Assayas who creates the scariest sequence involving text messaging. So you know when you turn your phone on after half a day with it off, and, if you’re popular enough, you get all your messages in one dollop? Well this is what happens here. Kirsten Stewart’s Maureen is getting badgered by this mystery man by text so she turns her phone off until she gets home. When she does turn on her phone she is bombarded by messages that follow one after another that reveal the man is getting closer and closer. The scary thing is she isn’t getting this in real time as the series of messages, which were sent of period of 30 minutes, arrive all within a minute of each other you know he could already be at the door before she finds out.. It’s enough to make you shudder.

Overall, When a Stranger Calls is a pretty crappy movie, but the opening chilled every babysitter for years and years (adding to the already iconic Urban Legend). Over the course of a few hours, Jill Johnson (Carol Kane) hears a horrible voice on the phone which constantly asks “have you checked the children?”. At first it seems to be just a prank, but they start becoming more and more threatening. So Carol locks the doors and windows making sure nobody gets in but the kicker is the calls are coming from inside the house. For a crappy movie, this is one of the most influential opening scenes in horror movie history.

Wes Craven refined the horror genre numerous times over his career, one of his greatest ever films was Scream which kicks off with a rather deadly question and answer session over the telephone. Basically, if you get the question wrong, you die, and you can't hang up otherwise you’ll be gutted like a fish. Drew Barrymore was the victim in this memorable opening. A major shock, because it was to be expected that Drew Barrymore would be the main star. It was not to be, just like how Janet Leigh was also dispatched early in Psycho. 

Because you can never be too sure who is on the other end of the phone, you are unsure how to react, especially when the voice on the other end of the phone claims to be a source of authority. This is exactly what happened in Compliance where Becky (Dreama Walker) complied to each one of the demands from the supposed policeman, no matter how unnecessary and unquestionably wrong it obviously was. Becky is forced into many embarrassing and degrading situations simply because the fast food restaurant workers did not know the person on the other end of the phone was not a policeman.

The Witch in the Window was one the best films of Frightfest 2018. It built a very charming and effective father – son relationship but never forgot to be creepy. One of the prime examples of this is when both father and son are sitting on the floor of the renovated house. The father is on the phone talking to the mother, he says that his son is there with him only for the mother to say he is with her. For proof, the father asks for him to be put on the phone and the unmistakable sound of his son’s voice can be heard. The father then looks at what he thought was his son looking directly at him. 

The Ring (or Ringu) is famous for using the telephone as a source of horror. As you’ll know, whether you watch the cursed videotape, the phone will ring and voice will croak ‘seven days’ announcing you have seven days before Samara will climb out the TV and end your life. It’s creepy because it merely proves the rumours of the curse to be true. Never before has the sound of a ringing been so terrifying. 

The gripping and exciting Danish thriller The Guilty is set entirely within a Copenhagen Emergency Call Centre with the protagonist, Asger, spending much of the 85 minute run time on the phone, trying desperately to rescue a woman who has been kidnapped. The most dramatic moment was when Asger overhears the shock and horror of a policeman who finds the horrendous remains of a murdered baby. Hearing his distraught reactions is as effective as seeing the body itself.

Why are telephones so effectively utilised in horror? It’s mostly in part because sometimes we don’t know who is on the other end of the phone. If they claim to be an authority figure, then why wont they be? If they claim that they can see you, and you cant see them, then where are they? If someone calls you, and you don’t know who it is, who are they and want to they want? These questions sometimes cannot be answered and that is why any ringing phone in a horror movie should treated with trepidation because a ringing phone is almost never a good sign.